Are All Companies Ready for Social Media?

I’m confused as to what readings I’m supposed to respond to. The Week 4 readings start today (Sept. 25) but we have a blog post due today, too. Are each weeks blog posts supposed to be about that same weeks readings? Anyway, I’m responding to the Week 4 readings.

All of the readings were super good today, but the most valuable one was Is Social Networking for You? by Jack Molisani. The best part of the reading was the story about Frank Eliason and how he took the initiative to find Comcast customers on Twitter that were upset about the company and how he reached out to them to handle their concerns. Every company could learn something from Eliason’s story.

Many companies don’t understand that social media is an interactive tool between the company and it’s customers. Customers don’t always say positive things about the company and that’s why Eliason’s story is so valuable. If a company wants to have a social media presence, they need to monitor what people are saying about them so they can learn and prevent unnecessary negative comments. Eliason took the initiative to reach out to disgruntled customers to solve their problems. That is something pretty rare, and it would be interesting to know how many of those disgruntled customers that posted negative tweets about Comcast went and posted something positive after Eliason contacted them.

For a company to have a beneficial social media plan, they need to hire people that are technologically literate. Old-school bosses that don’t use social media are not the people to put in charge of a social media campaign because those bosses aren’t going to know how to effectively use social media. Old-school bosses think social media is free advertising so they want to use it but social media is so much more than that. Social media is a way to develop your brand in an online environment that customers haven’t seen before. Customers are used to seeing a company’s products on TV or in a printed ad, but they haven’t always seen those products in an interactive online environment.

If a company is going to commit to a social media campaign, they need to really consider if their products are right for an online environment and if they are willing to commit to the ‘up keep’ that social media requires. It seems that having a social media presence that isn’t up-to-date can be worse than not having a social media presence at all.

WooHoo! I am Blogging

Personal Experience 

I’d have to say that I am not necessarily a fan of blogging–not personal blogging anyways. I don’t care to have people read my daily thoughts because I am just not that exciting of a person. I also don’t care to read other people’s daily thoughts. With that said though, I do see the power of blogs. It makes ordinary people the news writer. They enable people to collaborate and share ideas. And for those reasons, I respect them.

Work Experience

At my job we use a blog to deliver our news, but we use it completely wrong (in my opinion anyways). We do nothing bloggy with it. Basically we enter our news story into the system and then threw RSS it feeds to the news section of our blog. That is cool and all, but it doesn’t allow for any of the cool bloggy stuff like commenting, sharing, rating, and etc. I hope in this class I learn some strategies that I will be able to bring back to my team and advance our use of blogs and other social media.

One last thing before I sign off. I will say that so far I am enjoying this blog more than the discussion board *cough* 1996 social media *cough*.

Week 2 | It’s Like a Book, Only Better

Blogging is communicating through reading and writing, but it is reading and writing evolved. From our readings this week, I watched the clip of two monks, one monk trying to show the other monk what a book was on Langwiches.com, “What does it Mean to be Literate?”. That is perhaps a bit how I feel about blogging for the first time, a bit like the confused monk. I’ve only admired other people’s blogs from a distance, but never blogged myself. I found the clip of the monks humorous, so I posted it on my Facebook page. A few friends commented on the link, and two even shared it on their own pages. Even though the friends who shared it on their own Facebook pages were not in the same state as I was, I was able to present the ideas in the clip to them—a distant collaboration. I am hoping that this is what happens through our class blog—meaningful, open collaboration. My thoughts are out there for my class and the world to see.

An image on the same blog post show a poster with all the skills that people can develop when blogging. It’s an extensive list. It includes:

• Collaboration skills
• Presentation skills
• Communication skills
• Media literacy
• Technology skills
• Typing skills
• Writing skills
• Hyperlinked writing
• Networking skills
• Information literacy
• Digital citizenship
• Reflection skills
• Publishing skills
• Organizational skills
• Global awareness
• Folksonomy
• Reading skills
• Commenting skills
• Digital footprint

These are a lot of benefits of blogging, especially in our online classroom setting. I didn’t even know what folksonomy was (keywords assigned to images or information—aka, tagging). So, with all these benefits, I’m excited to try blogging—social learning; and I agree with Nate, it seems more conducive to natural communication than D2L.

P.S. Holy cow. It took me 20 minutes to figure out how to post this. I need a monk help desk…

Blogging and The Readings

Blogging

When I first saw the test post assignment, I thought to myself that I didn’t really have very much experience blogging. I think it’s partially because I start to blog, get bored, abandon blog and then forget all about it.

My first blog was on blogger. I can’t even remember the name. I think it was from 2006, maybe. I wrote about weird and funny things that had happened in my day.

I also have blogged for the Department of Art and Design (now the school of Art and Design). It is really, really low on the priority list for the unit, so I only occasionally post. Mostly I solicit write-ups from faculty since I’m not an expert, but I sometimes write articles.  It’s found here: http://sightlinesblog.blogspot.com/

I made a recent attempt at blogging. I was focusing on trying to be more mindful of the happiness in my life, so I put this together. However, I kind of got bored talking about what I ate every day, which I discovered was a big factor in my everyday happiness level. Here it is: http://thehappinessreport.blogspot.com/

I’ve also anonymously guest blogged on a friend’s national blog.

The Readings

There was a lot of ground covered in these readings. In Reid’s “Why Blog” I found some of the reasons my blogs haven’t really been successful. On p. 311, he states “The most challenging task is finding a subject on which to write, or what we rhetoricians term “invention.” That’s one of my biggest problems.

I liked Davies and Merchant’s idea of blogging as a social practice, and was a little surprised at their assertion that blogging was a “seductive” activity, although I have seen why through my own experiences. This article struck a chord with me, because I am really interested in affinity spaces and communities of practice. I didn’t know what they were called, but I was interested in that sense of community that blogs engender. I am so interested in these communities, that I had been thinking about doing my thesis on the phenomenon with regard to memes. I think this will be a seminal springboard for that.

There were great bit and pieces in the rest, like Nardi’s five motivations for blogging, Du & Wagner’s correlation to teaching (which crosses over into my ENGL 750 class) and Gregg’s matter-of-fact, downer Debbie look at blogging for Ph.D. candidates and junior faculty. I really enjoyed reading about SMRs. They seem to make lots of sense.

Mayday! Mayday!

Personal Blog:

As if right now, I’m not a fan of (personal) blogging. Hopefully this course will help me get a better understanding of why people blog and why blogging is so mainstream. For me, blogging seams like a lot of work because a blog is almost like a living thing. It needs attention to grow or else it will just sit there and die and nobody will ever see it again. Since I can barely keep myself alive, I highly doubt I could keep a blog alive. A blog also seems to fill the area between a hand-written journal and a personal Web site. Blog authors want to share their thoughts but they don’t want to do it on a personal Web site. This is what I don’t understand. Many blogs seem incomplete because they are ugly, full of typos, and don’t have too much credibility. If a blog was set up like Web site and looked professional, then I might stop and read what is there.

I’ve had a little bit of experience with blogs. By “little experience” I mean I was forced into writing a couple of blogs as an undergrad in college (this is like Déjà vu).

I’m not completely against blogs. It’s just that blogging as I know it, doesn’t interest me at all. I don’t have any desire to share my thoughts with people and I also don’t have any desire to read other people’s thoughts (unless someone has invented a good blue pen).

 

Group Blog:

I think group blogging makes more sense. For example, in a company environment, I could see a group blog as a great tool for communicating with everyone in an organization. I also think a blog for this class will work really well because we will keep it populated and current. It’s also a nice break from the redundancy of D2L.

 

Bye now!

–Nate

Blogging in Secret!

My Experience with Blogging

I actually have a personal blog, which I write for myself more than anyone else. Considering it’s password protected, and my husband is the only one with the password, I guess it truly is for myself. The first blog I ever had was in college before “blog” became a buzzword (does that make me sound old? I’m only 27!) and it was just called a “LJ” (short for Livejournal). My family and friends had my LJ URL and I updated while I was studying abroad in England. Fast forward to July 2010 – I started my blogger.com blog, which is what I still write in today. I write an average of one post a day – mostly about what’s going on in my life, nothing very exciting at all. The main reason I haven’t shared my blog with anyone is because it’s my space to be completely honest with how I feel, while not worrying about anyone else’s feelings. Apart from writing in my own blog, I follow several personal blogs, and blogs on natural food eating and DIY/home improvement blogs (how many times did I say “blog” in one sentence? ha!).

Reading Reflections

In Nardi’s article “Why we blog,” they state that in blogging, the reader gets a strong sense of the author, which could be why we’re drawn to them as humans. If you respect someone and view them as creditable, it’s no surprise that you’re likely to tune into their opinions on topics you’re interested in. Something else that struck me in that article was this: “Most bloggers are acutely aware of their readers…calibrating what they should and should not reveal.” I think this is precisely one of the big challenges of blogging. Authors have to censor themselves to some extent so not to alienate or offend their readers, who make the blog successful in the first place.

In Du and Wagner’s article about learning logs, it stated that web logs could be used instead of written papers to prove understanding and comprehension on the students part, which I think is a fantastic idea because it creates discussion between students and the professor instead of one-way communication that papers provide between the professor and the individual student. Plus, I think there are some very interesting and insightful disucssions that could pop up in a blogging environment that normally wouldn’t be brought to light in traditional circumstances.

Robin Gotch – First Post (let’s hope I don’t delete it!) – EDITED 9/21/2011

I had a blog – and I deleted its contents.  I wrote some really cool stuff – but then reconsidered.  I still think what I wrote was good, but realize that more thought and planning is necessary before I jump into the fray. Being a very honest person, the sort of person that you best not ask the question if you are afraid of the answer,  I tend speak my mind and have a very strong personality.

I also want to be hired to write or teach some day!

So, should I blog?  And if I do, should I set limits or should I go “balls to the walls” as is my want and do this thing up right? As you can see, I usually have many more questions than answers – so, should I blog about what and who I am or what confuses me?

In the end, I think the most important thing I need to do is learn. I need to learn about what blogging is, what types of blogs are out there and where I fit in, if anywhere.

Thoughts on the Readings:

There is no question that my own, personal feelings on blogging were quite inaccurate. This is exemplified by my comments above. I was under the assumption that the only good blog was one that dealt with politics or other intense issues. Silly me, blogging is for everyone! In fact, blogging is akin many other internet activities. It provides a cultural release nothing short of a shared online diary for many people. How many people this is shared with is a matter of personal preference. At the very beginning of the article, Why We Blog, it is evident that there is no one reason that people take pen to paper – er – fingers to keyboard, and document what is itching to be told.

I also found it appropriate that blogs are typically found by other blogs. This makes sense to me. I was so unfamiliar with blogs primarily because I was not active in the blogging community. What hit home for me was the statement “Bloggers sometimes poured out their feelings or ideas and sometimes struggled to find something to say.”  This sums up my reticence in a nutshell. Do I dare pour out my feelings? And what if I don’t feel like writing for a time?

Getting back to the concept of how to find a blog, I did a random search in Google for “blogs about horses”. Low and behold there is a site: http://horsebloggers.com

DOH! Now, this may not be the exact blog site I want to follow, it sure showed me how far my head was stuck in the … sand.

First post!

Hi everyone!

Here is my test post, if anyone has trouble viewing/reading it please let me know! I am excited to be using blogs this semester. To be honest I have no prior experience with blogs before using them in this class, unless you count Facebook. I look forward to utilizing this way of discussing and sharing throughout the semester!

Mena Trott on Blogs

In the test posts in the coming weeks I look forward to hearing your opinions on blogs and hope that the use of a course blog allows us to grow as a community of writers.

To get a sense of the types of blogs I prefer to read, check out this TEDTalk. As an owner of a blog hosting service, Mena Trott has an interesting take on how she sees people using blogs to express themselves.

 
<for some reason the code wasn't working from the actual TED.com site, but I found the talk on YouTube.>

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